Audio: copy LPs to CDs

[MERRITTGENE]

I'm looking for a recommendation for how to best copy my albums to CDs. (I want access to the songs/performers/versions that I grew up with.)

Mostly, I'd like to know what software is best, and which to avoid. Can I do a decent job with freeware, or would it be better if I bought something commercial?

Also, I'm totally in the dark about file formats. I don't have an .mp3 player, so all I really need to do is get the data in a format that can be burned to an audio disc. But, is there one storage format that would be better than others? Is .wma okay? Should I choose the highest bit rate possible?

Since the Forum has an amazing cross-section of knowledge and talents, I figure there's an expert out there somewhere.

 

[kbasa]

Brad's probably more qualified than I am to answer this, but you probably want to save them to .wav files.

There are software packages that will help you get rid of all the pops and clicks and stuff too.

You might also consider visiting a used CD store and doing it that way. You can buy the used CD, copy the material to your machine and then sell the CD back to the record store. It'll cost you a couple bucks per CD, but it'll take waaaaaaaay less time.

 

[darrylri]

I've been (very) gradually ripping my old LPs to my computer. If you're running WinXP, the Digital Media Plus Pack has a utility to do this. It's certainly not painless, you have to enter all the data about the album, and often fix up the track breaks.

Once they're on the computer, you can create audio CDs or MP3 CDs with just about any CD writing software.

KBasa's right, however; the fastest way is to get used CDs and rip those.

 

[MERRITTGENE]

buy the used CD

I thought of that, but what I want to copy are the Christmas albums that I grew up with. Some of these are 40 year old True Value Hardware compliations, and similar titles.

 

[darrylri]

I thought of that, but what I want to copy are the Christmas albums that I grew up with. Some of these are 40 year old True Value Hardware compliations, and similar titles.

Yeah, I've got some LPs that never came out on CD either. You're stuck doing it the hard way.

 

[STRESS]

I believe the obsticle to overcome is the need of amplifiying the output from the turntable prior to going into a normal sound card. I think that the " all in wonder" brand card is something that might be a good start for connectability. Check out their stuff I believe it will get you pointed in the right direction.

 

[USERNAME]

my father in-law has a set up that he uses for this. i'll email him and ask how he does it. he's likely to have hit the optimum point of cost, ease of use, and quality, he's a good problem solver. he might err on the side of spending a little more money to make the other two variables better.

i think you want to go to radio shack and get their cheap phono pre-amp. i used to muck around in a home theater forum and this often came up. people have religion on this stuff (like oil, etc) but the pragmatic folks over there were just using the radio shack unit with no complaints.

from there you need a sound card with a line in plug. at this point, i think a lot of your fancy sound quality will diminish (i assume you don't care much, since these are old-ass rekkids.) as they are usually those headphone jacks, not RCA plugs. whatever. send the phono output into the line in.

as for software, i know of two ways to do this, neither automated or super easy, but both will work for low cost. one is to buy a copy of goldwave. (google it.) it's a great sound editor in general, and it might have specific stuff for digitizing LPs. the second is a program called total recorder. i use this software (i think i paid $10 for it, and it was worth every dime) to record real audio "this american life" episodes directly to MP3 format for later listening on the iPod. it's easy to use, but i think you'd end up doing each song as a discrete files, so it'd be tedious.

how many albums do you want to digitize?

edit: i got this reply from my FIL regarding his project...
-------------------------------------
All affordable soundcards require a stronger signal than what comes out
of the turntable, so you need to run it through a preamp before it can
go into the line-in jack on the soundcard. First I tried to record from
my downstairs system through an external sound card into Kathy's
notebook. But the processor wasn't fast enough to prevent dropouts.
So I put in a M-Audio 5.1 soundcard into my PC, hauled out my old
receiver, and carried my turntable upstairs. I ran the phono into the
receiver and the preamp output from the receiver into the soundcard. I
recorded onto my hard disk using the Roxio Wave editor recorder. Then
just cut a CD.
That's about it.

I have not been successful in breaking the sides down to track files for
each cut.

I did a lot of internet searches and couldn't find a better way.
------------------------
hope this helps.

 

[RIDERR1150GSADV]

I ended up buying a Philips CD recorder that I hooked up to my stereo system. From there I put the CD's on my I-Pod. I have a lot of classical albums that are so rare that I doubt a CD will ever be produced.
It is a long ,procedure and in order to listen to i.e (ALL 25 LP's) of Bach's organ works requires the right mood and so far I have done about half....

 

[BUBBAZANETTI]

i used to just go from the record player to the audio board to the cd burner (stand alone) in one of the studios at work, now i dump it into adobe audition to clean it up a bit before committing it to cd. all you need is a good sound card, a recording program and a phono preamp, pm me for more details if you'd like

 

[boofer]

Have been transfering LP's and cassets to disk for about three years now. Got the whole shebang here....www.dak.com/

Pre-amp mixer, recording editing program, and a program for eliminating pops, clicks, even 60 cycle hum and more.

Works great, editing can be a chore untill you get the hang of it


Tim

 

[BRADFORDBENN]

There are many ways

Well there are lots of ways. Here is what I would recommend in basic terms

1) Get a decent Sound Box/Card. I prefer the outboard USB or firewire devices to a card. The main reason is due to signal to noise ratio as a result of lots of things but mainly the size of the space to put the same amount of electronics. Would you rather try to fit the phone book into a system case or a tank bag? Also a good sound box like an M-Audio device can handle the lower signal with its own amplifier inside. You may also want to look at adding balancing transformers into the system.... yes, I can go one and on about this stuff.

2) Nero has some pretty decent software for doing this, as does Adobe with Audition. Audition is a little more but it has plugins that help with noise cancelling. Also it works well as you can record the entire side of the album and then go in and slice it into songs. I happen to use ProTools, and can get super tweaky. Might be overkill for you

3) Sample at least at 44.1kHz and the largest bit depth. This means that you are going to get as much information as possible. Even if you are going to make them into MP3s it is best to start with a clean source.

4) Clean the albums and static zap them before recording

5) Listen to the sound of the stuff with real size speakers not typical computer speakers.

So as you see there are lots of ways to do it. Knowing what I know about you, I would recommend the following:

M-Audio Audiophile USB unit
(http://www.m-audio.com/products/en_us/AudiophileUSB-main.html) it comes with some basic software for doing the editting you might need to do. It is not even one of the companies I work for. There are other options from M-Audio that would work just as well. There are lots of ways to do this process.

Just remember it is only going to sound as good as the weakest link.

 

[MERRITTGENE]

Knowing what I know about you,

Well, you pegged my Id pretty well, but you obviously forgot that my Super Ego is broke.

This is really a one-shot deal, I'm not planning to go into business doing this.

DAK claims to have the end-all setup/software for exactly what I want to do. But, they claim to have the last word in every gadget imaginable. (I returned my BluBlockers and decided against the bubble-jet printer 25 years ago.) In this case, does their software work as well as they claim?

I've done something like this before, and splitting a long stream into seperate tracks was a pain. I think it's probably worth the money to have software do this automatically.

I'm curious about software titles that excel in capturing. I'm not worried about the burning.

Thanks to everyone for the suggestions so far.

OTOH, if 10 people wanted to purchase $30 worth of album ripping, then I could buy the trick setup and start a home business.

 

[BRADFORDBENN]

Just bring the vinyl with you to the next Round Up....

 

[boofer]

Gene, editing with DAK is simple IF there is an obvious gap between tracks. Most of what I've copied, the tracks run together, so you have to zoom in, pick a spot and then preview, redo if necessary.

The bad, you can't edit out skips so walking away while recording will bite you in the ass.


Tim

 

[James.A]

I use a D.A.T. deck to compile tracks from vinyl and then feed the compilation to a CD burner deck. Luddite?, yes.

 

[swleejr]

recording to computer

Hi,

I'm slowly doing the same. I didn't really check out what's out there, I had Musicmatch jukebox to record it. It can record to the hard drive. Since my computer had a sound card that could handle Analog signal, I took the tape out (rec) from my stereo and put it into my computer. The sound card came with its own control software. Had to play a bit with the volume but got some stuff recorded. Stereo setup was as normal, record player in to Phono input and I used my head set to listen to it as it went along. The Musicmatch software can break up songs in to parts incase it all just runs together. It is suppose to be able to find the breaks between songs, but doesn't work so well. It works for $19.99. Hope this helps.

If anyone finds good, inexpensive software for recording it be nice to hear about it.

Thanks

swleejr

 

[BUBBAZANETTI]

I use a D.A.T. deck to compile tracks from vinyl and then feed the compilation to a CD burner deck. Luddite?, yes.

hey, i got some 8 track reel to reels and some cart machines and and 8 track cassette recorder sitting around here, wanna do business???


we actually still use the 8 track DAT though, so no dice on that!

 

[GIZMO]

I believe the obsticle to overcome is the need of amplifiying the output from the turntable prior to going into a normal sound card. I think that the " all in wonder" brand card is something that might be a good start for connectability. Check out their stuff I believe it will get you pointed in the right direction.

You need a pre-amp to do this.

 

[James.A]

hey, i got some 8 track reel to reels and some cart machines and and 8 track cassette recorder sitting around here, wanna do business???


we actually still use the 8 track DAT though, so no dice on that!

Bubba, I might be interested in a cassette multi-track recorder. I have a theory that a person could use one to play music backwards, and I've always wanted to try it out.

 

[jmerlino]

Bubba, I might be interested in a cassette multi-track recorder. I have a theory that a person could use one to play music backwards, and I've always wanted to try it out.

You can find loads of old casette 4-tracks in the classified.

But something like that is way easier to do with software.